Rwanda’s Southern Province officials on Monday met with their counterparts in Nyaruguru district, Southern Rwanda, to assess how far the district has gone towards achieving the 2012-2013 performance contracts.

In a more than five hours’ meeting session held in Nyaruguru district’s conference hall, executive secretaries for the district’s 14 sectors and senior district officials stood up, one by one, to make a Power Point-enabled presentation on various areas of performance contracts like economy, good governance and the social welfare of the population.

On occasion, Jeanne Izabiriza, Executive Secretary of the Southern Province – and head of the five-person assessing team – had to raise her voice’s tone to challenge the presenters whenever they seemed to overlook some details or just gave what appeared to be unconvincing facts.

“How comes that you didn’t bring a copy of the performance contracts we are discussing about today and yet we [Southern Province assessing team] had informed you of the day, the date and even the hour we would be coming for the assessment?” Izabiriza posed, sad, after it transpired that half a dozen officials in the conference hall were confusing facts, simply because they had no supporting document.

Areas where Nyaruguru district seems to have so far made important strides include the construction of classrooms for the country’s 12 year-basic education programme, the construction of public toilets and building accomodation facilities for teachers.

Figures dated November and leaked in Monday’s assessment meeting suggest that, by then, the district was in the sixth position countrywide (that is, Rwanda’s 30 districts involved) and in the third position in the Southern Province with regard to the construction of classrooms, and second at both country and province levels in having public toilets while coming in the 13th place countrywide and in the fifth place at the province level in building teachers’ accomodation facilities.

But there is still a lot to do, according to the performance contracts assessing team, in areas like the construction of 35 houses for needy survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The district says it has so far achieved 20 per cent of its target – the one of building 35 houses −, which sounds a bit of a disppointment to the quizzing team.

“It[this component of performance contracts] is still lagging far behind”, a member of the evaluating team said.

Overall, Nyaruguru district, through the voice of Egide Kayitasire, Executive Secretary of the district, says it has so far achieved 42.9 per cent of its economy projects, 37.5 per cent of its social welfare projects and 17.8 per cent of its good governance projects.

Jeanne Izabiriza disagrees, arguing that some inconsistencies in facts appeared through the quizzing process should take the statistics at a bit lower level than it is now, therefore calling upon the Nyaruguru district officials to work much harder to fix them and meet their targets by July 2013, when the twofold 2012-2013 budget year and performance contracts’year comes to an end.

The Southern Province team is expected again in Nyaruguru district in January 2013. That time, it is expected to be grading the performance contracts in Nyaruguru before they are graded at the national level a few months later.

Last fall, in the 2011-2012 performance contracts’ results, Nyaruguru came in the 26th position out of Rwanda’s 30 districts, scoring an average mark of slightly over 80 per cent. This was a relatively better stance than in the year before, 2010-2011, when the district ranked 29th countrywide with an average point of 75 per cent.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame initiated the performance contracts in 2006, as a way of developing the country through acknowledging and rewarding best performing leaders, among others.